JUST BREAKING - ABC News is now reporting that the Bajur raid was carried out by Coalition forces - AS PREDICTED HERE BY PIPELINENEWS - most likely a U.S. Predator drone. Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian born al-Qaeda number 2 in command was apparently the target of the strike. Additionally unconfirmed reports have been circulating that Zawahiri was killed in the raid.

October 31, 2006 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Last evening's missile attack on a terrorist training center in Pakistan's tribal area has prompted inexplicable responses among the MSM.For example, the Christian Science Monitor's David Montero calls the attack, "a setback to border peace" stating that, "the timing of the strike raises questions about Pakistan's commitment to such deals."

Pakistan's wholesale retreat [accompanied by a release of jailed Taliban terrorists along with their weapons] from Waziristan - the "deal" which Mr. Montero refers to - has resulted in a three-fold increase of Taliban attacks upon neighboring Afghanistan, the border shared by the tribal areas and Afghanistan now resembling a sieve through with al-Qaeda passes at will.

That the airstrike in Khar came early in the morning on the day when an agreement was expected to be signed between the local Bajur tribal leaders and the central Pakistani government is odd however.

One plausible explanation might very well be that the attack was not carried out by the Pakistanis, but rather by Coalition forces whose intention was not only to kill the intended al-Qaeda targets but at the same time to emphatically scuttle another disastrous Pakistani withdrawal agreement similar to that reached with Waziristan.

Pakistan's claim that it conducted the raid itself is understandable from the perspective that U.S. led operations in Pakistan are controversial to say the least and such a claim would at least partially indemnify Musharraf's government against such charges.

Al-Qaeda sympathies in these tribal areas are deeply felt, with pro-Taliban tribal militants and elders revering Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar as "heroes of the Muslim world."

In January of this year a U.S. Predator aircraft struck a terrorist meeting being held in a residence in Damadola in the same Bajur tribal area, intending to kill the number two al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

For days after that event much of the U.S. media joined with the foreign press in perpetuating the myth that the targeted building was filled only with civilians, but shortly after their initial anti-American paroxysm it became clear that while Zawahiri was not in attendance at the meeting - perhaps being tipped off by Pakistan's notoriously Islamist dominated ISI - al-Qaeda explosives and chemical weapons expert Midhat Mursi was there and was killed during the strike.

Pakistani officials - off the record - eventually stated that in addition to Mursi, Abdul Rehman al Magrabi, a senior operational commander for al-Qaeda and Khalid Habib, the al-Qaeda operations leader for both Pakistan and Afghanistan, were also killed in the raid, though their bodies had been removed from the site of the attack.